The immigration debate is a major source of political conflict, yet little is known about how citizens themselves perceive it. This paper uses a survey experiment with open-ended questions to examine which arguments respondents attribute to their opponents, which they consider the strongest for the opposing side, and how both compare to the arguments opponents actually use. The study is conducted in Norway, a low-polarization, consensus-oriented context where relatively accurate and charitable interpretations of opponents’ reasoning might be expected. Still, the findings show that while many recognize legitimate arguments on the other side, they attribute considerably weaker arguments to their opponents. Text analysis reveals that their preferred counterarguments resemble opponents’ own more closely than those they attribute to them. This suggests that mutual understanding in the immigration debate is obstructed less by a failure to appreciate opponents’ arguments than a systematic misrepresentation of them.

We study the effect of time-varying disagreement of professional forecasters on the transmission of monetary policy in Korea, which has transitioned from an emerging to an advanced economy. We find that high levels of disagreement interfere with the transmission of monetary policy and, hence, weaken monetary policy effects. However, under low levels of disagreement, a monetary policy shock elicits textbook-like responses of inflation, expected inflation, and real activity. The findings are consistent with the view that disagreement affects the role of the signaling channel of monetary transmission relative to the conventional transmission channel. We also show that the dependance of the transmission on the level of disagreement remains intact even after controlling for time-varying monetary policy uncertainty and considering the shifts in the Bank of Korea’s inflation target type.

Open-mindedness requires us to be receptive to new evidence that contradicts our own views. Laurie Paul (2021) argues that there are situations in which we should, in fact, avoid exposure to putative evidence, as it may undermine our rational abilities. One example she discusses is the sensus divinitatis (SD) as a transformative experience. If an atheist agrees to be exposed to this experience, he may become a theist and, by his pre-transformation atheistic standards, irrational. Paul contends that we have valid reasons to avoid encountering putative evidence in these circumstances. This paper will argue that there are rational strategies to help us determine whether to expose ourselves to transformative experiences like the SD.

In these replies, I respond to critical comments on my book (Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, Oxford 2021) from Julia Smith, Louis Doulas, Bill Lycan, and Matthias Steup, who (along with me) contributed to a symposium on that book for this journal. I discuss the following topics (among others), all in the context of my commonsense response to radical skepticism: epistemic intuitions, evidence, disagreement, philosophical pessimism, epistemic modesty, inference to the best explanation, theoretical virtues, particularism, methodism, epistemic circularity, and higher-level requirements on epistemic justification.

How should you respond to higher-order evidence which says that you have made a mistake in the reasoning from your first-order evidence? It is highly plausible that you should reduce your confidence in your first-order reasoning. However, attempts to precisely formulate how this works have run into problems. I will argue that we should appeal to an independently motivated normative contextualism. That is, normative words like ‘ought’ and ‘reason’ have a different reference in different contexts. The result is that different answers to our question are true in different contexts.

The thought that intellectual arrogance consists in, roughly, overconfident resilience in one’s beliefs has been influential in philosophy and psychology. This thought is in the background of much of the philosophical literature on disagreement as well as some leading psychological scales of intellectual humility. It is not true, however. This paper highlights cases (of “stubborn fools” and the “arrogantly open-minded”) that cause trouble for equating intellectual arrogance with overconfident belief resilience. These cases are much better accommodated if we see intellectual arrogance as, instead, a form of vicious intellectual distraction by the ego.

I raise two concerns about Bergmann’s philosophical methodology: the first is a parity problem for his intuition-based “autodidactic” approach; the second is a tension between that approach and the commonsense tradition in which he situates it. I then use his approach to reflect on the limits of rational argument and set it alongside an alternative that likewise emphasizes the personal nature of philosophical inquiry while remaining more neutral about the rational standing of competing intuitions.

Is it ever rational to change your mind based on learning that others have changed theirs? This paper answers affirmatively and explores the conditions under which learning about others’ mind-changes should prompt you to reconsider your own. I propose that learning about others’ shifts in belief can motivate further inquiry, provide information about the existence or quality of first-order evidence, and recalibrate our evaluation of the issues at stake. However, not all changes of mind are epistemically meaningful: some may be superficial, misleading, or driven by non-epistemic factors. Critical evaluation is necessary for distinguishing between cases that provide genuine insight and those that are irrelevant. By investigating these dynamics, I aim to illuminate the broader epistemological significance of mind-changing and its implications for navigating complex and contentious issues.

According to accounts like Alexander Bird’s Minimal Functional Account of social knowledge, various groups like those within the sciences can socially know that <p>, even if no particular individual within that group knows that <p>. Bird’s primary example of a group that has such knowledge is the community of semiconductor physicists – which, as he contends, is sufficiently functionally integrated to satisfy accounts like his own. But, what about specialist communities within philosophy? Do they satisfy accounts like Bird’s own? Should they? As I will suggest in this article, some of them should, but do not appear to do so – at least, as of yet.

This article raises some questions about the intuitionist response to skepticism developed by Michael Bergmann in Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, with a focus on Bergmann’s contention that epistemic intuitions serve as justifying evidence in support of anti-skepticism. It raises three main concerns: that an intuitionist conception of evidence is overly narrow, that it has undesirable implications for cases of disagreement, and that the evidential role that epistemic intuitions play in Bergmann’s version of anti-skepticism undercuts his claim that an intuitionist particularist response to skepticism is superior to disjunctivist responses.

We use a human-subjects experiment to investigate how bargaining outcomes are affected by changes in bargainers’ disagreement payoffs. Subjects bargain against changing opponents, with randomly drawn asymmetric disagreement outcomes that vary over plays of the game, and with complete information about disagreement payoffs and the cake size. We find that subjects only respond about half as much as theoretically predicted to changes in their own disagreement payoff and to changes in their opponent’s disagreement payoff. This effect is observed in a standard Nash demand game and a related unstructured bargaining game, in both early and late rounds, and is robust to moderate changes in stake sizes. We show theoretically that standard models of expected utility maximisation are unable to account for this under-responsiveness, even when generalised to allow for risk aversion. We also show that quantal-response equilibrium has, at best, mixed success in characterising our results. However, a simple model of other-regarding preferences can explain our main results.

Many accounts of political liberalism contend that reasonable citizens ought to refrain from invoking their disputed comprehensive beliefs in public deliberation about constitutional essentials. Critics maintain that this ‘refraining condition’ puts pressure on citizens to entertain skepticism about their own basic beliefs, and that accounts of political liberalism committed to it are resultantly committed to a position – skepticism about conceptions of the good – that is itself subject to reasonable disagreement. Discussions in the epistemology of disagreement have tended to reinforce this critique, which has come to be known as political liberalism’s skeptical problem. This paper responds to the skeptical problem by providing a novel rationale for the refraining condition, which I call the burden of total experience. Such a burden emphasizes that full communication on the basis of individual belief is not always possible, even between epistemic peers. Accepting the burden of total experience allows individuals to recognize the reasonableness of the refraining condition in a way that stops the slide to skepticism, all while avoiding, or so I argue, relying on a problematically controversial explainer for disagreement.

What is the difference between a philosophy and an ideology? Would simply observing some aspect of human experience count as ideology? No. But suppose we try to explain and interpret what we have seen. Now, we enter the neighborhood of what gets called ideology. What else does it take to sort out what should be called ideological? And why would a worldview sometimes turn into an echo chamber, a cocoon of confirmation bias that fosters false consciousness?

In this paper, I argue that echo chambers pose a problem for moral progress because of their threat to moral reasoning. I argue for two theses about the epistemology of moral progress: (1) the practical utility thesis: moral reasoning plays an important role in improving moral judgments, and (2) the conflictive social reasoning thesis: the kind of moral reasoning that is important for moral progress involves social reasoning with disputants. Without some conflict, human beings will naturally reason in a biased and otherwise poor manner. Thus, good reasoning must be social so that reasoners who disagree can keep each other in check. These two theses explain why echo chambers are a problem for moral progress. I argue that echo chambers isolate individuals from reasoning with those they disagree with. This is because echo chambers act as a mechanism for discrediting those outside the chamber. If this is true, then the members of an echo chamber will only reason with those who agree with them. The result is that echo chamber members won't reason according to the conflictive social reasoning thesis. Reasoning will only reinforce their existing echoed beliefs rather than improve them.